Did You Guess Elaine?

This clue wasn't bad if you've been around a while. The next person on the New York rotation is Elaine, and we always play a lot of games. The game I showed you last night was called Master Labyrinth. We think it would be fun with three or four people, but with the two of us both playing defensively, we decided to give up on it about halfway through. She was ahead at the time, but we were both tired of it. Here's Elaine cogitating her next move.

This morning, we started in again. Upwords is possibly Elaine's favorite. She beat me smartly. (But I beat her last year.) Sorry for the weird angle on the board, but you can see the words.

Elaine had asked me if I had a game I could bring, so I brought one of my very favorites which no one will play with me. Elaine liked it, but the learning curve is steep. We played about five rounds, but in demonstration mode, just for fun. I'll bring it next time so we can compete.

Then we played another that belongs to Elaine that we both like, Carcasonne. The biggest problem was that we didn't have a large enough flat surface, and the paper we tried to cover the slat tables with created too much topography for the map. But we successfully completed one game. I won this one.

This is part of Elaine's rock collection. She loves geology. I love plants.

Here we are, the "Bobsey Twins," so nicknamed by our high school gym teacher, and it has been an apt comparison. We are 364 days apart in age, like many of the same things, etc. (Except that she's six feet tall and I'm not.)

We had grilled cheese sandwiches with smoked cheese for lunch. Yummy!

Now, here's your clue for where I am now. This will be about as much help as the computer memory board was, but tough nuggies. It's all I have. I'll tell you that the ferret's name is Pebbles.

No walking occurred. I had high hopes, but it just didn't happen. Tomorrow should be more active.

See Did You Guess Irene?

Paleontological Research Institute

First of all, we are safely at Bill's house. Long day in the car. I'll use the blog time tonight to tell you more about the big event of yesterday with Elaine.

We had a private tour of the Paleontological Research Institute in Ithaca.

Here's the deal- one of Elaine's first jobs was as an assistant to the director of the institute. That woman was apparently their most influential director ever, and when the current director (Warren Allman) learned that Elaine knew Dr. Palmer well, he really wanted to talk with her.

This is in the research library- getting acquainted.

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Dr. Allman was a wonderfully gracious host. He gave us a tour of all the behind the scenes parts. This is the type specimen collection. The PRI has the largest collection of fossils in the world, and they have over 16,000 type specimens (keyed out without ambiguities, as perfect as possible, organized and labeled, etc)

They have millions of fossils in their complete collections. They aren't even all in their database yet.

These are micro-specimens. They have been mounted for viewing under a microscope.

And we got a private tour of the public part of the musuem. I'm only going to show you a few things that were unusual to me. Remember, I grew up in this part of New York where we would fill our pockets with fossils every time we went outside.

These are crinoids with the heads attached. Very ususual to find the heads. The "stems" break up into little segmented tubes and they are some of the easiest fossils to find. But they are animals in the same family as starfish. The heads are rarely preserved as fossils.

These are impressions of sea urchins.

And this is a book printed in 1684. It is the oldest book in the PRI collections, and is devoted completely to mollusks and shells.

We spent two hours there, so obviously saw lots more than this. The private tour was great. They were really interested in hearing personal memories of Dr. Palmer, and we got to ask questions like you never would on a self-tour. Not to mention seeing the labs and collections.

There is one more thing from the PRI that I want to share, but it needs to have its own post. I'll catch that one another day.

IF you are ever in Ithaca, and this sort of thing interests you, it's definitely worth a stop.

Tomorrow, final stop for this trip... home.

See A Day with Elaine

A Day with Elaine

Today I spent with my friend Elaine. I'm too tired to blog about everything we did right now. The middle of the day was really great and it deserves its own blog post. I'll just share the other parts tonight.

If you've been around long enough to catch a couple of the visits with Elaine, you know we like games. We played Scrabble twice- each won once. I won this one.

And we played Upwords twice- each won once. She won this one.

One game of Carcasonne. I like this one a lot, but only play it with Elaine, so I forget the strategy. She won, but it was fun.

We went out for lunch, and the important stuff. Like ice cream.

And what was Bill doing? He went for a little hike on the Finger Lakes Trail. Very, very hot, but he did about 10 miles.

The rest of the day was filled with something quite special but it needs more brain power than I can muster right now to do it justice. I'll write about it another day.

Have to get some sleep now.

See Transition to Civilization?

Return to Lick Brook Falls

 I made it to Elaine's tonight. We took a short hike in the evening, because it's going to continue to be pretty hot during the days. Lick Brook Falls, (along the Finger Lakes and North Country Trails) see link below for when I was there on the big hike, is only about a mile from where she lives, but she'd never been there. It's in a nature preserve, but it kind of a "secret."

To get there you have to cross a railroad bridge. This is probably illegal, but everyone does it, because there is no other bridge over the creek.

Elaine had never been there, and she loves waterfalls. But it was a bit disappointing because... it's July... not very much water.

But, there were a few interesting trickles.

Someone else thought the railroad bridge was interesting too. Yup, it's another blue racer!

You know I was looking at the plants. This isn't anything really special, but I don't see it very often, so I had to look it up to remind myself. It's Ditch Stonecrop, Penthorum sedoides.

And that's enough for today! We have some adventures planned for tomorrow, but I need a long nap first!

Miles hiked so far in 2024: 266.3. NCT miles hiked 106.2.

Route 96 to Lick Brook Falls and back and a little more. Near Ithaca, NY. 1.8 miles

See Lick Brook Falls

Cayuga Lake Loop

Did you guess Elaine?

We set off this morning for an adventure going all the way around Cayuga Lake. Cayuga is one of the two largest Finger Lakes, 40 miles long and 2 miles wide. It's the lake I grew up on. It's "my" lake, even more than Lake Michigan. In this picture, the lake is down in the deep valley between the hill I'm on and the far one.

We drove up the side of the lake opposite where we grew up. When we were kids, this was like the other side of the planet. We just never went there! This is at the north end of the lake looking south.

We did so much stuff! All I can do is hit a sampler today. Maybe I'll share more in the future. We stopped and read almost every historical marker. We ate lunch at a park (picture above) by the railroad station of the Lake Cayuga Railway. I took pictures of many old buildings. One thing you sure don't find in Michigan is houses built in the 1700s and early 1800s.

However, the bulk of our time was at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. When we were kids, this was a refuge, but there was no public access. Now there is a drive you are allowed to take, with a few observation decks and a visitor center. Elaine is the super birdwatcher. I'm only mediocre. She's more interested in the birds; I do the plants. We got some of each. I'll only share the very best of the afternoon.

This was a new life list bird for me. It's a common gallinule. Gallinula galeata. Not a great picture. There were three of them, being very secretive. So I'm happy I even got this.

Elaine got to add a sandhill crane to her life list.

The best of the day was this black-crowned night heron, Nycticorax nycticorax, was not new to either of us, but I'd sure never seen one this close. And we have no clue why it was so active during full daylight.

Switching to plants, by far the showiest is the swamp rose mallow, Hibiscus moscheutos. Many of them have a darker red center, but not all. These did not. The flowers are 4-5 inches across.

Of the rest of the plants I pictured, I guess I'll share this one. This is a knapweed. If you are familiar with the totally obnoxious invasive spotted knapweed, you will recognize the shape of the flower. Now, however, we are in ID trouble. There are hundereds of Centaurea. It's easy to eliminate the yellow and blue and red ones, and the ones not in North America at all. This flower is about 2 or 2.5 inches across (much bigger than the spotted knapweed), and the leaves are very different. A lot of the ID of Centaurea has to do with the shape and texture of the bracts below the flower.

Checking for kinds found in New York, I think this is a hybrid of brown and black knapweed, called meadow knapweed. It grows in some counties in New York, including where we were today. This is my best guess. It doesn't even have an official taxonomic name. I've found it before in New York, and have had this same trouble identifying it. Now for the bad news. Even though it's much prettier than spotted knapweed, it's also alien.

Coming home on the west side of the lake, we stopped with Elaine's brother for a visit, drove through a short but interesting storm, and went out to dinner.

Long day! What will Joan do tomorrow?

See Abby Sends Me Off

A Day with Elaine

  Today, Marie and I spent the day with my friend Elaine. You can see why we used to be called Mutt and Jeff if you are old enough to remember that cartoon.

Our first activity was to go fossil hunting for a couple of hours. Around here, that is usually a sure thing to find a few fossils. We didn't find anything spectactular, and I forgot to take pictures because it was just run of the mill stuff. But we had fun. In this stone, there is the round end of a horn coral impression, and the impression of some worm. We also found crinoids and brachiopods, and some other small shell impressions.

"Look over there," Elaine instructed. It's like the grass on the other side of the fence... you always think the best ones will be just around the bend.

Then we went to a small public garden and musuem. It was really nice. Even though it's September, there were still quite a few flowers in bloom.

We spent about two hours there, but I would gladly go back again. We didn't really see it all. There is an extensive stamped brick collection.

There are a number of buildings filled with old tools. One building is a working mill. This is just a small bit of some of the farm tools on display.

The most amazing thing is a fossil he found on his property. It's been called one of the most significant fossil finds of New York State. You need to understand that each half of this rock is bigger than I am, and is filled with these fossils of Glass Sponges. A fossil colony had never been found before. They are Uphantaenia chemungensis

Finally, we made a visit to Ithaca Falls.

Dinner out and it was time to say goodbye. Nice day.

See Crystal Hills

Fun with Elaine

  Marie and I spent all day today with my friend Elaine. We did a lot of the sort of chasing of memories that I did a few days ago. First stop was our old waterfall friend, Taughannock. Highest free fall waterfall east of the Rockies at 215 feet. We did some more driving around town. This is the library where I got my first library card at age 4. I had to prove to them that I could read before they would issue it. Challenge met. I got my card. Then we went to see an osprey nest. Mom was on the nest. She did some flying around while we were there. And dad was about a quarter mile away. Then we drove past a house Elaine used to live in and some other places near there, including this hill. Butcher Hill. It's about a mile long. The pastor at our church when we were in junior high was great with youth. This hill is not plowed in winter, and he took the whole youth group out there and put lanterns along the edges of the hill. We would sled, toboggan, etc down the entire mile and then walk back up. You could manage 4 or 5 rides in an evening if you were quick. There was a bonfire at the top with hot chocolate and marshmallows. Great times. Finally we ended with a short walk on the same trail Marie and I hiked yesterday. Here I am with Elaine. Then we went for ice cream! It was a long, social day. I'm hitting the sack.

See Interloken and Interlaken